Power out across Cambridge

Reports pouring in of power outages from across the city: Kendall, Central and Harvard squares all without lights. Cambridgeport is dark. The Cambridgeside Galleria and the Museum of Science? Powerless. Even the Harvard Business School across the river might be out.

Just biked through Cambridge. Central/Kendall all dark. Central smells heavily of ozone.

NStar reports 28% of the city is without power. Area 4 and Inman Square are OK.

The Red Line is dead, although a T spokesman denied a Twitter rumor that it was due to a deer getting hit at Kendall Square. "The Red Line is underground in Kendall Square," he said. Still, MBTADeer quickly sprang up.

The last time that happened, I heard about stations where the lights were out, and there was no emergency backup lighting. That's terribly dangerous -- an underground space that can hold thousands of people needs battery backup lighting as a basic precaution.

I find it hard to understand what they would be doing instead of directing traffic right now - it's dangerous (for cars and especially pedestrians) and well past the point of being obstructive to the flow of emergency vehicles were there an emergency.

I just walked from Kendall to Allston and saw the PD directing traffic at precisely ZERO of the 9 lights i walked by, including Western at Memorial Drive. The only two cop cars I saw were sitting at Central, but not directing traffic - they just closed Mass Ave to force cars to go around on side streets.

What could they be doing that they can't spare a single cruiser for Memorial Drive??? How would they respond to a more serious emergency?

An hour is (or should be) more than enough time to respond to heavily trafficked intersections to direct traffic no matter who's responsible. If it's not, or if they don't have the resources, then they are clearly unprepared if there was some more bigger emergency.

And as I said, I didn't see a single police car or uniformed officer anywhere between Kendall and the River St bridge save for two cars in Central, and busy intersections like Mass Ave/Vassar, Mass Ave/Albany, and Mass Ave/Main St/Sidney St were an unpoliced free-for-all. I saw numerous near-accidents and there's gridlock that would seriously hinder emergency responders.

Rode the 69 bus HvdSq to Lechmere between 5pm & 6pm; we crawled slower than the normal crawl, east cambr much gridlock; i myself saw police directing traffic at various Cambridge Street (in East Cambridge) intersections, on the McGrath behind lechmere station, at Land Blvd intersection and past Sci Museum at Sorrow Drive@Leverett Circle (i didn't notice which were State, which were Cambridge). Around 5:45 Cambridge-bound car traffic from downtown Boston was so backed up that people trying to leave the No.Station garage could not move. Yowza.
Well...it could have been sleeting, too, but instead it's a lovely night with fabulous full moon rising, how 'bout that!